Terrorism is a control style employed by totalitarian regimes. A people who are constantly terrorized and demoralized aren’t very likely to resist. Learn about MindWar psychological warfare.
5
Chile
In a famous expression of his contempt for democracy, Kissinger once observed that he saw no reason why a certain country should be allowed to “go Marxist" merely because "its people are irresponsible."
Salvador Allende
The country concerned was Chile, which at the time of this remark had a justified reputation as the most highly evolved pluralistic democracy in the southern hemisphere of the Americas.
9/11
SEPTEMBER 11, 1973. Getting the pattern?
The pluralism translated, in the years of the Cold War, into an electorate that voted about one-third conservative, one-third socialist and communist, and one-third Christian Democratic and centrist.
This had made it relatively easy to keep the Marxist element from having its turn in government, and ever since 1962 the CIA had–as it had in Italy and other comparable nations -largely contented itself with funding the reliable elements.
In September 1970, however, the Left's candidate actually gained a slight plurality of 36.2 percent in the presidential elections.
Divisions on the Right, and the adherence of some smaller radical and Christian parties to the Left, made it a moral certainty that the Chilean Congress would, after the traditional sixty-day interregnum, confirm Dr. Salvador Allende as the next president. But the very name of Allende was anathema to the extreme Right in Chile, to certain powerful corporations (notably ITT, Pepsi Cola and the Chase Manhattan Bank) which did business in Chile and the United States, and to the CIA.
This loathing quickly communicated itself to President Nixon. He was personally beholden to Donald Kendall, the President of Pepsi Cola, who had given him his first corporate account when, as a young lawyer, he had joined John Mitchell's New York firm.
A series of Washington meetings, held within eleven days of Allende's electoral victory, essentially settled the fate of Chilean democracy.
After discussions with Kendall and with David Rockefeller of Chase Manhattan, and with CIA director Richard Helms, Kissinger went with Helms to the Oval Office.
Helms's notes of the meeting show that Nixon wasted little breath in making his wishes known. Allende was not to assume office. "Not concerned risks involved. No involvement of embassy. $10,000,000 available, more if necessary. Full-time job-best men we have.... Make the economy scream. 48 hours for plan of action."
Declassified documents show that Kissinger-who had previously neither known nor cared about Chile, describing it offhandedly as “a dagger pointed at the heart of Antarctica"-took seriously this chance to impress his boss.
A group was set up in Langley, Virginia, with the express purpose of running a "two-track" policy for Chile: one the ostensible diplomatic one and the other – unknown to the State Department or the US ambassador to Chile, Edward Korry-a strategy of destabilization, kidnap and assassination, designed to provoke a military coup.
There were long-and short-term obstacles to the incubation of such an intervention, especially in the brief interval available before Allende took his oath of office.
The long-term obstacle was the tradition of military abstention from politics in Chile, a tradition which marked off the country from its neighbors.
Definition of abstention : the act or practice of abstaining: such as the act or practice of choosing not to do or have something
Such a military culture was not to be degraded overnight. The short-term obstacle lay in the person of one man-General René Schneider. As chief of the Chilean General Staff, he was adamantly opposed to any military meddling in the electoral process.
Accordingly, it was decided at a meeting on 18 September 1970 that General Schneider had to go. The plan was to have him kidnapped by extremist officers, in such a way as to make it appear that leftist and pro-Allende elements were behind the plot. The resulting confusion, it was hoped, would panic the Chilean Congress into denying Allende the presidency.
A sum of $50,000 was offered around the Chilean capital, Santiago, for any officer or officers enterprising enough to take on this task. Richard Helms and his director of covert operations, Thomas Karamessines, told Kissinger that they were not optimistic.
Military circles were hesitant and divided, or else loyal to General Schneider and the Chilean constitution.
As Helms put it in a later account of the conversation, "We tried to make clear to Kissinger how small the possibility of success was."
Kissinger firmly told Helms and Karamessines to press on in any case. Here one must pause for a recapitulation.
An unelected official in the United States is meeting with others, without the knowledge or authorization of Congress, to plan the kidnapping of a constitution-minded senior officer in a democratic country with which the United States is not at war, and with which it maintains cordial diplomatic relations.
The minutes of the meetings may have an official look to them (though they were hidden from the light of day for long enough) but what we are reviewing is a “hit"-a piece of state-supported terrorism.
Ambassador Korry has testified that he told his embassy staff to have nothing to do with a group styling itself Patria y Libertad (Fatherland and Freedom), a quasi-fascist group intent on defying the election results.
Does this sound just like Q?
He sent three cables to Washington warning his superiors to have nothing to do with them either. He was unaware that his own military attachés had been told to contact the group and keep the fact from him. And when the outgoing president of Chile, the Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei, announced that he was opposed to any US intervention and would vote to confirm the legally elected Allende, it was precisely to this gang that Kissinger turned.
On 15 October 1970, Kissinger was told of an extremist right-wing officer named General Roberto Viaux, who had ties to Patria y Libertad and who was willing to accept the secret US commission to remove General Schneider from the chessboard.
The term “kidnap" was still being employed at this point, and is often employed still. However, Kissinger's Track Two group authorized the supply of machine guns as well as tear gas grenades to Viaux's associates, and never seems to have asked what they would do with the general once they had kidnapped him.
